PRESS RELEASE for LEGO 75222 - Betrayal at Cloud City Announcement

[nikhkin]

Some people here seem to be forgetting that opinions differ. 

If you think it is bad, it is entirely subjective. 

If you like it, it is entirely subjective. 

Saying people are wrong for liking or not liking it is pointless. People won't buy it just because they buy things no matter what. They will buy it because they like it. 

It's exactly the same as what happened with the Hogwarts reveal. People were saying it was wrong to like it because they wanted a minifigure-scale castle. If you don't want to get it, fine, but arguing that nobody should be allowed to like it is ridiculous. 

[x105Black]

I won't buy it, but I do like Leia in the dress outfit, Lando, the Ugnaught, and Han's legs.  Some of the details are interesting, and I'm happy for anyone that's really into this set.

Mostly, I'm just glad they did this rather than a microscale build.

Edited August 25, 2018 by x105Black

[dvogon]

The move to put a mid-scale Slave I is something I don't actually understand. Now it makes little sense to make a system-scale Slave I to be next to the tons of system scale MF sold in the past years. 

Sure that most people would be more than glad to get a system scale Slave I to play with a MF, as most of them wouldn't be able to afford the CC set. But if Lego would release a system scale Slave I, it would also imply that the mid-scale one was somewhat a waste of pieces budget. 

This applies mostly to the Slave one, the cloud car is almost system scale. And as there were many of them, releasing another one would be ok.

[bountybossk]

Oof LEGO, you were so close to hitting the nail on the head with this set. The minifigs sell it for me and all the small vignettes look great. However, as one big thing it looks quite messy.

The micro city on top looks great and I love how they tried to recreate the disc shape of Cloud City, but it's ruined because of one thing: the landing platform. That thing looks incredibly dull and takes up way too much space. It even forces the carbon freeze chamber and the final duel in one segment.

With a few changes this set could've been almost perfect. For both play and display purposes. I made a quick sketch in LDD and I'm thinking about remodelling the set once the instructions come online.

Section 1: dining room, white hall (with access to section 2) and the small living area look perfect, no changes there. Replace the small maintenance area for the entrance door with access to the detachable landing platform.
Section 2: accomodates the dark red hall with access to section 3, the interrogation room, the prison cell and garbage processing room.
Section 3: a whole section for the carbon freezing chamber with stairs/walkway and part of the final duel hallway with access to section 4.
Section 4: final duel area with maintenance cabin and the sensor balcony. No flooring here, but a rail as used in the Death Star (bottom-left section) to keep the disc shape.

Other things I don't really like/would change:

• The Twin Pod Cloud Car is essential to the set, the midi Slave I could've been left out (although it looks fantastic).
• I would've loved a new mould for Carbonite Han.
• Probably not popular, but change the color of Lando's head from reddish brown to medium nougat like the Billy Dee Williams Two-Face fig. I feel reddish brown is too dark and makes his print hardly visible.

Edited August 25, 2018 by bountybossk
Added new link

[Lord Insanity]

Why do so many people think the Slave I included is midi-scale?  The two sets actually released in midi-scale were rather specifically NOT mini-figure compatible.  The Slave I included is actually classic system scale. The first few years of Star Wars sets were all classic system scale like the original Slave I set 7144.

The newer modern system scale Falcon is almost the same size as the older classic system scale Falcon.  The new classic system scale Slave I included in Cloud City is the first Slave I since 7144 that actually matches scale with the current system scale Falcon.  Ironically the new Cloud Car is almost the same size and scale as the original classic scale set.

I really wish Lego would go back to the relatively consistent classic system scale sets as opposed to the modern system scale where the vehicles are all over the place size wise.  If this new Slave I is any indication they could make some amazing builds in the classic scale.  The original 7140 X-wing is still the only T-65 X-Wing in the correct color for example.

Remember the original Slave I was $20 US and the original X-wing was $30 US.  Even adding $10-$15 more for modern design density and inflation is still better than the $80-$100 monster scale things they are trying to pass off as "small" ships and fighters today.

[Kristof]

 

1 hour ago, bountybossk said:

Oof LEGO, you were so close to hitting the nail on the head with this set. The minifigs sell it for me and all the small vignettes look great. However, as one big thing it looks quite messy.

I very much agree. The thing is your quick mockup for remodel ALREADY looks 100 times better than the set, because of the floorplan that actually approximates a circle, rather than Lego TERRIBLE angular... thing. Also I agree on the landing pad being off to the side. All in all, just like this I would be much more inclined to liking the set!

[Robianco]

The new X-WIng is actually pretty close to minifigure scale. Or at least close enough to be considered so. In that sense it's in scale with the UCS Falcon and UCS Slave 1. The 8097 system scale Slave 1 is much larger than the one in the CC so by today's standards it's midiscale. Same as the TIE in the DS. It can fit a minifigure inside but is still between system scale and microscale.

[Schneeds]

I'll echo what a lot of others have said.

I think the biggest drawback is that from 10 feet away you can't even tell what the set is.  There is zero mistaking the death star, or even Hoth, but an average fan probably wouldn't even know what this is until they study it.  The piece count just isn't high enough to justify having the Slave 1 present.  Better to flush out the base and make it circular with more "city" details on top so that it appears more iconic. 

I'll say this for it, it has a lot of modding options, which some might really like.  It would be very easy to put a base under the carbon chamber, flush it out a bit, move the lightsaber duel over to existing platform, and build that out and move it elsewhere. 

My biggest complaint with the death star was always I could find so very few ways to improve it :)

[dvogon]

7 hours ago, bountybossk said:

With a few changes this set could've been almost perfect. For both play and display purposes. I made a quick sketch in LDD and I'm thinking about remodelling the set once the instructions come online.

This is a good starting point for a mod .  The rounded shape is key. However, the big landing pad distracts the overall shape. I would have an upper deck where the landing pad fills a quarter of it, that would keep the important rounded shape. There are other smaller rooms could fit without too much redesign.

8 hours ago, bountybossk said:

Section 4: final duel area with maintenance cabin and the sensor balcony. No flooring here, but a rail as used in the Death Star (bottom-left section) to keep the disc shape.

This part is tricky. Separated sectors for the freezing chamber to the lightsaber duel room is the right option. Those are two very important scenes. Both the freezing chamber and the lightsaber room have a lot of depth. But having two decks it could be possible to fit them. The ceiling of the freezing chamber could hold the freezing device. The stairs go down to the bottom of the freezing device. From the upper part there should be access to the lightsaber duel room. And Luke falls down from the broken window to the sensor balcony (more or less). 

[bountybossk]

28 minutes ago, dvogon said:

The rounded shape is key. However, the big landing pad distracts the overall shape. I would have an upper deck where the landing pad fills a quarter of it, that would keep the important rounded shape. There are other smaller rooms could fit without too much redesign. 

I thought about it quite a bit, but two levels would make it hard to keep the disc shape. It would also restrict the space for playability. Multiple levels for an orb like the Death Star: no problem. Multiple levels for a disc: not ideal.

Another advantage of the one level disc shape with 4 segments is that every segment shows a chapter from the movie in chronical order.

I agree about the landing platform. It kind of ruins the shape. I would probably take it of if the final design looked like my mock-up.

Edited August 25, 2018 by bountybossk

[TwoSolitudes]

My guess is that this will not be a hard kit to pickup. It's a playset aimed at kids, but the kids it's aimed at will not have any real connection to the scene. You will get a few collectors interested, but nowhere near the MF level. It just doesn't look 'good'. If they had done a detailed display micro-level type thing it would have hit a much much larger audience of adult collectors. Not opposed to playsets, but simply from a marketing view, I really don't understand what they were thinking with this particular one.

My kids would not look twice at it in a lego store. And its not a display piece at all. so.....

I guess we'll see. Meantime I keep my $$$ set aside for the UCS Star Destroyer. 

 

[Lord Insanity]

9 hours ago, Robianco said:

The new X-WIng is actually pretty close to minifigure scale. Or at least close enough to be considered so. In that sense it's in scale with the UCS Falcon and UCS Slave 1. The 8097 system scale Slave 1 is much larger than the one in the CC so by today's standards it's midiscale. Same as the TIE in the DS. It can fit a minifigure inside but is still between system scale and microscale.

The modern system scale Slave I 8097 is to scale with the UCS Falcon.  The actual UCS Slave I is way bigger than "true" mini-fig scale just like the UCS X-Wing.  Slave I is just not that large of a ship.  The classic system scale Slave I included with Cloud City is the perfect scale counterpart to the current system scale Falcon.

This is my problem with modern system scale sets.  They don't really fit into a "system" anymore.  The sizes just go all over the place.  We haven't had a scale Slave I to go with a system scale Falcon since the original in 2000.

Slave I being a unique "hero" ship is a perfectly logical inclusion in a set like Cloud City.  You only need one of them.  The Cloud Car being included is a bit more annoying because you actually could use more than one.  Though it being rendered in the wrong color does make it more likely we will see a stand alone set in the correct color in the future.  I certainly would buy a few.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

On 8/24/2018 at 11:15 PM, krisandkris12 said:

Is it really? I am always honestly surprised by these very saturated comments, whether solely negative or solely positive, with a set like this, which I personally perceive as kind of *meh*... it has plenty of both good and bad aspects. I would be interested in why do you find it so cool, maybe I am really missing some point :)

Not being an expert in this part of the forum I have perhaps less needs than a true fan of "Star Wars" theme.
I don't find defects in the set, even compared to the old set 10123 of 2003 (now very expensive) that I don't like so much with its old minifigs.
The new set seems to me much more modern and interesting ...maybe I wouldn't have included the Slave I, redundant with the existing single lego set 

[nikhkin]

19 hours ago, bountybossk said:

 

Section 1: dining room, white hall (with access to section 2) and the small living area look perfect, no changes there. Replace the small maintenance area for the entrance door with access to the detachable landing platform.
Section 2: accomodates the dark red hall with access to section 3, the interrogation room, the prison cell and garbage processing room.
Section 3: a whole section for the carbon freezing chamber with stairs/walkway and part of the final duel hallway with access to section 4.
Section 4: final duel area with maintenance cabin and the sensor balcony. No flooring here, but a rail as used in the Death Star (bottom-left section) to keep the disc shape

This is exactly what I was thinking in order to perfect the set.

The move of the carbon freezing chamber to the back, so they can have a proper, focused area for the duel is the most important change they could have made. 

The extra smoothing-out of the shape you've done also helps refine it. 

I'd even go as far as to say you don't need the rail around the duel section. The whole point of the scene is that Luke is trapped out in the middle of nowhere with, seemingly, nowhere to go. Isolating that section on the build would help to emphasise that.

[Kristof]

4 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

I don't find defects in the set, even compared to the old set 10123 of 2003 (now very expensive) that I don't like so much with its old minifigs.
The new set seems to me much more modern and interesting

Alright! I mean, it's cool to get positively excited :D Maybe a lot of us miss on some joy by being too critical. I personally don't dislike the set from a core SW fan standpoint, but more visual and set-design standpoint. For SW fan, it actually has a lot to offer and if you are into reenacting the scenes from the movie, that's probably the biggest strength of this set anyway. My major complaint is the overall looks, which seems to be very far down on the priority list of this set and I think it's wrong, because, playset or not, you will end up having this on display, at least for the time you aren't playing with it, and as such it just doesn't look remotely good for me.

[Robianco]

10 hours ago, Lord Insanity said:

The modern system scale Slave I 8097 is to scale with the UCS Falcon.  The actual UCS Slave I is way bigger than "true" mini-fig scale just like the UCS X-Wing.  Slave I is just not that large of a ship.  The classic system scale Slave I included with Cloud City is the perfect scale counterpart to the current system scale Falcon.

This is my problem with modern system scale sets.  They don't really fit into a "system" anymore.  The sizes just go all over the place.  We haven't had a scale Slave I to go with a system scale Falcon since the original in 2000.

Slave I being a unique "hero" ship is a perfectly logical inclusion in a set like Cloud City.  You only need one of them.  The Cloud Car being included is a bit more annoying because you actually could use more than one.  Though it being rendered in the wrong color does make it more likely we will see a stand alone set in the correct color in the future.  I certainly would buy a few.

The older 8097 system isn’t minifig scale and isn’t in scale with the UCS Falcon. Slave 1 is much larger than that... it always has been since the older guide to vehicles books with the cross sections. There are meant to be holding pens inside the main part of the hold along with various other spaces. That just wouldn’t be possible with the 8097 scale. You only have to look at ESB with them loading Carbonite Han up the ramp.

I think the designer even mentioned the scale in his designer video.

[nikhkin]

10 hours ago, Lord Insanity said:

The modern system scale Slave I 8097 is to scale with the UCS Falcon.  The actual UCS Slave I is way bigger than "true" mini-fig scale just like the UCS X-Wing.  Slave I is just not that large of a ship.  The classic system scale Slave I included with Cloud City is the perfect scale counterpart to the current system scale Falcon.

The UCS Falcon, UCS Slave I and UCS Imperial Shuttle are all in minifigure scale.

8097 is undersized compared to minifigures.

[Lord Insanity]

So taking a much closer look at 8097 vs 75060 I think the issue here is the actual mini-figures.  A mini-fig is far too wide for its height.  8097 is the right size for how high a mini-fig is.  75060 is the right size for how wide a mini-fig is.  Looking closer at the UCS Falcon it is scaled to the width of a fig rather than height.  So yeah I was comparing the height of the Slave I sets to the height of people from the actual loading scene from Empire Strikes Back.  Counting the studs, the UCS sets are scaled to width not height of a mini-fig so that is why it looked wrong to me.

Regardless the classic scaled Slave I in the Cloud City set is still first set since the original 7144 that matches the system scale Falcon.  As I greatly prefer the system scale sets, (despite scaling issues) I still think this new included Slave I is the best version of the ship so far.

[Midlife-crisis]

I like the minifigs and the design, but overall way too much visible studs on the floors.

 

 

[Tariq j]

I actually quite like it, but it’s definitely doing too much for too little, the main landing pad should have been connected to an existing section rather than taking the place of one, and whilst I love the addition of the Cloud Car, I don’t think it needed its own landing pad. The Freezing Chamber also should have had its own section, I think the previous Chamber set had the right idea with the stairs, if you combine those with this one, you’ll have a solid piece. I don’t want to rag on too much though, at the end of the day we’ve got a Cloud City set and with some tinkering it could definitely work. 

[Don Neimoidte de la Mancha]

Does anyone know if the Boba Fett is the same one as in Slave I? I am asking because of the leaked Boba Fett that we were seeing on instagram some times ago.

[Sneakguest]

On 8/25/2018 at 12:11 AM, AndrewShun said:

All these positive comments surprise me as well. I get a feeling that people know something great about this set that is missing on the pictures. Mainly because people who have spare money to spend on that set must be adults in general, and I don't see how a grown up person could spend a huge amount on that. It's not a collectible, it's badly designed, not a display model for sure.

It doesn't look like a rational option for a present for a child either. I'd imagine if my relatives ever gifted me a set like that back when I was a kid, I'd be like "really?". 'cause it's messy and poor looking. I'd better go and gift my child a Ninjago City, for example, because it's a stunning model and we could watch the latest movie together as well. I'm not sure every kid can even recognize this huge (talking about 75222) pile of weirdly connected pieces.

Dude, its like you forget your hobby is lego. Not generally seen as adultisch to begin with. So it looks pretty odd when you are stereotyping other legon fans interests. 

On 8/26/2018 at 12:15 AM, TwoSolitudes said:

My guess is that this will not be a hard kit to pickup. It's a playset aimed at kids, but the kids it's aimed at will not have any real connection to the scene. You will get a few collectors interested, but nowhere near the MF level. It just doesn't look 'good'. If they had done a detailed display micro-level type thing it would have hit a much much larger audience of adult collectors. Not opposed to playsets, but simply from a marketing view, I really don't understand what they were thinking with this particular one.

My kids would not look twice at it in a lego store. And its not a display piece at all. so.....

I guess we'll see. Meantime I keep my $$$ set aside for the UCS Star Destroyer. 

 

And I showed it to my daughter the day it came out and she really likes it. Adults are different and kids are different. I just thinks its hell to early for people here to state that this set will flop when the basically have nothing else than their own opinion and a few other peoples, to base it on.

[RODDY]

I don't know why but this set is really growing on me. Like some of you guys my first reaction was like meh. Cool but not great. But when that guy did the cut out of the set and you get the actual size, it sold it to me. I had the original as a kid but my parents sold it when we moved. So getting this set back in some form has been a priority to say the least. It's the last Star Wars set I really need (moving to Ninjago and Harry Potter next) 

On 8/25/2018 at 6:15 PM, TwoSolitudes said:

My guess is that this will not be a hard kit to pickup. It's a playset aimed at kids, but the kids it's aimed at will not have any real connection to the scene. You will get a few collectors interested, but nowhere near the MF level. It just doesn't look 'good'. If they had done a detailed display micro-level type thing it would have hit a much much larger audience of adult collectors. Not opposed to playsets, but simply from a marketing view, I really don't understand what they were thinking with this particular one.

My kids would not look twice at it in a lego store. And its not a display piece at all. so.....

I guess we'll see. Meantime I keep my $$$ set aside for the UCS Star Destroyer. 

 

I hope you are right because I don't want to wait months on months to get it as the wait spoiled my enjoyment of the UCS MF quite a bit because of how terribly Lego handled the situation. I didn't even really care by the end. I have classes to attend when the Lego store opens so I'm not gonna make till around 2pm. 

 

[Legolost]

On 8/21/2018 at 8:38 AM, TheRacker said:

Do I see dual molded legs on Han Solo?

I believe you do.

[Kristof]

10 hours ago, Sneakguest said:

And I showed it to my daughter the day it came out and she really likes it. Adults are different and kids are different. I just thinks its hell to early for people here to state that this set will flop when the basically have nothing else than their own opinion and a few other peoples, to base it on.

Did she like it as in 'this is the set I want the most' or rather as in 'this is nice, I wouldn't mind having it'? :) I am sure many kids will like it, that's for sure. It's big and there is a lot to play with.